Temporary Love
by Auchen
Summary: In order to get evidence that a notorious thief is going to re-enter the criminal world, Red and Liz enter into the suburban jungle and go undercover as a married couple. Still recovering from Tom's betrayal, Liz is bothered by the arrangement, but as time goes on, her feelings become more complicated as she and Red spend almost all of their time around each other.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This fic was written because I shamelessly love the Fake Married trope no matter how many times it's done, and I really like The X-Files episode "Arcadia". This takes place vaguely in season 2 after 2x16. I hope you guys enjoy!

* * *

 _Is our love just a part time?/Sometimes I think that it's more, have I lost sight?/So unsafe_

 _Is this temporary love I crave?/Will we ever get enough to take/From the memory, it was a phase/Is this temporary love?"_

-Temporary Love, The Brinks

* * *

It was never a good sign when she woke up late and wasn't in time for work. The last time that had happened, she'd had a criminal suddenly tossed into her life that had made her existence much more complicated than she ever though it could be. So as she stood in the elevator, fingers picking at the cuffs of her shirt, she couldn't help but shake the feeling that when the doors whined open, she would be met with something that was about to upset the apple cart once again.

As the elevator shuddered to a stop she heard the muffled hum of voices already engaged in fervent discussion. She ran the edge of her finger over a groove in the fabric of her shirt. If she had been a more optimistic person, perhaps she would've tried to tell herself that the discussion could've been over any number of things that would have little affect on her life. But optimistic wasn't something that she particularly ever had had been, and she figured it was simply best to plunge forward and face whatever mess was waiting for her.

The doors slid open.

"Ah, look! There she is now. Please settle a little disagreement that I'm having with your illustrious team-would you be entirely opposed to the idea of going under cover and pretending to be my wife so that we can avert what would be a completely disastrous theft?" Red had his hands clasped together and was giving an infuriatingly calm little smile.

For a moment, she didn't react. By now, Liz was so acclimated to his ludicrous comments that she didn't even react to half of them, so when he suggested that she pretend to be married to him, half of her mind simply ignored it. The other half firmly screamed _no_ _no_ _**no**_. The two parts of her mind quickly came to an agreement over how she felt about his statement.

" _Yeah_ , I would be opposed to that idea. Why is this even a discussion?" She wasn't about to grin and play-act her way through another false marriage. She'd already had one of those, and one was enough to last her an entire life-time.

Before Red could launch into an explanation that would no doubt exasperate her further, Cooper moved around him to stand near her. "It wouldn't be a discussion if we didn't feel it was necessary. There are rumors that a notorious, retired thief known as Snapper is going to steal an expensive piece of artwork. But they're only rumors right now, and we need more solid evidence to know if it's true or not."

Seemingly unable to let someone else take the reigns of the explanation, Red firmly grabbed the reigns away from Cooper. "Yes, you see, his thievery would have been rather harmless if not for his nasty little habits in the past of selling his merchandise to rather unsavory sorts of people-particularly powerful drug cartels and the like who further went on to sell the merchandise again,which greatly funded their actions. So while he hasn't directly gone out of his way to harm others, his thieving has had very negative, wide reaching consequences."

"I don't see how any of this relates to your suggestion of an undercover marriage." She crossed her arms, fingers tight against her elbows. She knew she'd interrupted him and it was perhaps childish to continue reiterating her distaste for the idea, but she didn't care.

"If you exercise a bit of patience, you'll find out. No good comes from rushing to the conclusion of a story." He narrowed his eyes. "You see, dear old Snapper-though he's blandly known by his given name Beecher Williams now-has decided to retire to the paradisaical hell known as suburbia. As Cooper said, there are rumors he's about to enter the thieving game once again, and considering the price of the art he supposedly wants to steal, it would be disastrous if the price tag went to fund the sorts of people he's had as clients in the past."

"So you think that if we move into a house in his neighborhood we can get the evidence we need to know whether the scheme is real or not?" The idea was ludicrous, but objectively, she supposed that it made sense. If Beecher had been quiet and careful for so long, he wouldn't be about to blow his cover. But suburbia was full of gossip, and if neighbors trusted each other, they let slip all sorts of things they might not tell anyone else.

"Exactly so." He raised his eyebrows and flicked her a small smile of pride over her correct connection to his logic. "There's a lovely little semi-furnished home for sale in their neighborhood already. Not quite my taste, but you'd probably like it."

She glanced away, hesitating at giving any sort of answer. This case wasn't any more dangerous than what she'd faced before. In fact, the potential peril was small, and if she had been able to survive multiple car wrecks and being strung up to be gutted by a serial killer, then she could certainly be able to make it in suburbia. Still, there was something much different about those situations compared to this. Those had been battles of emotion and strength, and she'd made it through at the end, though her psyche had not been fully unscathed. This scenario would be a battle of emotion, of existing in the same quarters as Red for an extended period of time. Boundaries would inevitably crossed.

She inhaled, raising her eyes back up to the man she might potentially be sharing a house with.

"What do you say, Agent Keen?" He took a step toward her. And then another and another until he was only several inches away from her. His breath stirred a strand of hair that had fallen against her cheek. "Will you marry me?"

She swallowed. If she said no, she was being selfish. If she went through with the sham, she would potentially avert millions of dollars falling into the wrong hands and ruining countless lives.

"Fine."

* * *

It was like watching an alternate reality come to life with the flick of a magical keystroke. Over the course of the day, Aram had been busily setting up a fake paper trail for the aliases she and Red had chosen. Part of the trick of undercover work was becoming someone that you weren't, but making your fake story have enough of the truth in it that sounded convincing, so she'd simply suggested that her alias be a psychotherapist. Her training and studies in criminal psychology would be enough that she could make a convincing psychotherapist.

Red's alias was a import and export businessman. She'd shot him a non-committal glare, but he'd simply shrugged and said it was closer to the truth than her alias' career.

Liz still wasn't exactly happy with the arrangement, but now for more complicated reasons than she'd felt initially. When the false marriage had simply been an idea that she had the opportunity to agree to or reject at will, her only issue had been with being forced into reliving memories of her time with Tom. That was still a factor, and it probably still would be during the entire undercover mission, but as she saw the paper trail unfold, she found herself wishing that at least part of the cover story was true.

Cathleen Moore, her alias, was a psychotherapist who had graduated from the University of Michigan with a master's degree and had met her husband Noah on a whirl-wind post-graduation trip to Paris. (Of course, the suggestion of Paris had been Red's idea.) She'd fell madly in love with him and married him quickly during the trip, and now they had been happily married for three years as she was working on building up her clientele.

It wasn't the being married to Red that she wanted. She didn't even like the University of Michigan. But the thought of being married to someone loving and devoted-the idea of being with someone with no pretenses or lies made something inside of her heart twist. Cathleen Moore was a happy woman with a life that wasn't without its problems, but whose existence was uncomplicated and _normal._ She worried about bills and forgetting to go grocery shopping, and she wished that she could find a job sooner. She also kissed her husband and stayed home with him on weekends and watched reruns of The West Wing, and on special days they'd go out to eat.

Cathleen Moore's trust wasn't irreparably fractured by a marriage of two years that had been a lie. She didn't float from motel to motel, looking over her shoulder to see whether some new criminal threat was following her.

* * *

The fake paper trail wasn't the end of it.

If she was going to pretend to be passionately in love, it would only make sense if Noah and Cathleen had pictures of them together to put up in their home. Liz had simply suggested that they could doctor images of her and Red together, but with a sympathetic grimace, Aram had informed that them taking real photos together would be better. It would take less time and wouldn't be found to be fake upon closer inspection.

So that was why she was now in a park that could passably improvise for a park in France with some named photographer Jade Daughtry that Red had predictably found. _She's simply wonderful. She's taken some of the best blackmail photographs that I've needed. She really has an eye for color and composition,_ he'd said, and then delightedly informed Liz that her day job was as a wedding and engagement photographer.

"No, no, this isn't right at all." Jade let out a huff and pushed up her thick glasses, a hand on her hip. "Your arm is out of the frame. You can't cut limbs off at the joints in pictures like this. You need to move more to the right." She twirled a finger.

They hadn't even taken the first picture yet, and Liz had been ordered as if she was a completely incompetent actor that couldn't follow stage directions. She shifted her arms under the blouse that Red had presented her with for her to wear in the photos. Regrettably, she found it beautiful, but she would never have any use for it.

She scooted to the right as per Jade's instructions, keeping her eyes averted from Red, doing her best to smile as if it was the happiest day of her life. His hand slipped around her waist and leaned in closer to her.

"Perhaps look a bit less stiff. At the moment, your smile looks like you've just eaten the worst sea food in your life," he said, his voice vibrating in her rib cage.

She bit back a sharp comment. If she didn't argue as much as she normally would, this would be over all the more quickly. Her lips twitched as she tried to relax them, her shoulders slumping down with them.

It wasn't just the strangeness of the situation that made her feel stiff-it was the contact with Red. For all his penchant for verbosity, the second most common way he expressed how he felt was through physical contact. A hand against the back to steer her away, a tug at the elbow to try to get her to back down from a fight that she wasn't going to win, arms around her as she wept and collapsed beneath the weight of all that she had done.

She was no stranger to his touches, but _this_ -it was different. Staged or not, there was a stark contrast between a comforting embrace and them sitting together beneath a tree with her arms wrapped around his neck as a photographer told her to lean her head against his.

As she wordlessly followed Jade's instructions, the photo session blurred together into dozens of camera flashes stabbing her eyes and the strange, spiced scent of Red and the warm touch of his hands against her. She never fully relaxed during the session, but she allowed herself to try to lapse into Cathleen's mindset. It was good practice, Liz told herself. If she tried to think like the imaginary woman she was supposed to be, the mission would be easier.

If she was Cathleen in that moment, she would've been grinning and elated to be capturing such precious, intimate images with the husband that she adored and had married in the spur of the moment while they were dizzy with love and the infected with the particular brand of madness that afflicted those that visited Paris. And so, by the end, as she stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, stood on her toes and leaned her chin against his shoulder, the smile she had plastered on her face was almost real.

When she and Red walked over to Jade to look through the photographs, she felt stricken. Whatever stiffness and strangeness she'd felt during the session didn't radiate through the photos. If she had been an outside observer, she would've been convinced that the photos were simply of a loving couple that couldn't keep their hands off each other. In the images, Liz smiled and laughed and her eyes sparkled in a way that they hadn't in a long time. And the way Red _looked_ at her _-_ he watched her as if she was the only thing that mattered in the world.

She hadn't been paying much attention to his face in the moment since she'd been too focused on staying in character as Cathleen, but as she passed her eyes over his expressions in the photos, she could almost believe that what he felt was real.

"These will suffice," he said, glancing over to Liz to see if she agreed. His tone sounded strange and almost a bit hoarse.

"Yeah." She shrugged, feigning nonchalance.

"So...you want me to print _all_ of them?" Jade raised an eyebrow, her dyed red hair falling over one shoulder.

He pursed his lips as if he was thinking and then said, "Yes. It will be easier to select the ones that we prefer that way."

"All right." She threw her hands up. "As long as I'm getting paid, we're golden."

"You will be. Thank you Jade, as always, you are an absolute sorceress with that camera," he said with a smile, his voice back to its typical smooth control.

* * *

She got her own copies of the pictures to go through the next day in order to choose the ones she preferred. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, fanning the photos out in front of her like a deck of playing cards.

Fingers tapping against the floor, she pressed her lips together and picked up the last picture. It was the one that they had taken when she'd felt the most comfortable, when she'd wrapped her arms around his waist and grinned at him, for all the world looking like a besotted newly wed.

In it, his head ways tilted to look at her where she stood behind him, his face only inches away from her smiling mouth. His eyes were lowered as he drank her in, the sunlight dusting his eyelashes golden.

Something inside of her ached.


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh, I'm so glad that such a nice couple like yourselves moved in here. The house has just been so empty after the Ralstons moved out, you know. Nancy just couldn't pass up that job opportunity in California, though. Oh, she talked about it for months before they actually moved-oh here, please, let me take that."

The older woman began to make her way toward Red in an attempt to extract the box from his arms, her hands slipping underneath the bottom of the box.

"That's not necessary-" he began, but was quickly cut off by the woman.

"Nonsense. I'm here to help, and I really do have a strength beyond my age." She successfully slid her palms beneath the box, her chin resting on the top of it as she walked into the room and past Liz who clutched her own box to her chest.

She shuffled back on the hardwood floor, trying to keep her balance as she tilted back against the weight of the dishes that were contained within the box. Two hours ago, she and Red had arrived at the house with every intention of moving their things in as quickly as they could in order to get to discussing how they would integrate themselves into the neighborhood. But then, as she'd been bending down to pick a box up out of the moving van, she'd seen the shift between the horizontal gaps in the blinds in the window of a house across the street, and minutes later an older woman had emerged. She was short and rather round, with curled white hair that almost had a blueish tint to it, and she had insisted on greeting them and helping them move in.

When she and Red had had a moment alone, they'd discussed trying to dissuade her from helping, but had eventually concluded that letting her help them would hasten along ingratiating themselves to the neighbors. And Liz had to admit that the woman-whose name was Madge, she reminded herself-was nice, though overly intrusive. The most amusing thing about the entire situation was that Madge gave Red's verbosity a run for its money. Still, she really rather would've preferred to get everything done without any sort of interference.

Stray, fly-away hairs ticked her cheeks as Madge blasted past her again on her path back to the moving van. Liz simply raised her eyebrows and closed her eyes for a moment as she exhaled, letting the cool air travel up her sinuses as she tried to hold her patience. Taking advantage of a less crowded room, she leaned down and deposited her box near the wall. The dishes inside clattered against each other and made one side of the box shiver. Hopefully nothing had broken. If something had, that would be the second time in a fake marriage she'd shattered some ceramics during the course of moving in.

The first time she and Tom had been moving into their home, her mind had been a static buzz of sleep deprivation and stress. She'd been elated to be married, but it had also thrown new changes and stress into her life, and that moving day her hands had been slow and clumsy. After they'd moved everything in and she'd started opening up some boxes to put things away, she'd seen that a box containing cups now only served as a nest of shards for their ceramic remains. She'd kicked at the box and began to tear up, her mounting anger only stilled only by Tom's hands on her shoulders and his reassurance that the broken cups didn't matter and that they'd buy new ones the next day. They'd had to drink out mason jars that night, and they'd laughed over how they were unintentionally transforming into hipsters.

She pressed her nails against her knee and shifted her shifted her jaw, teeth clicking against each other as she shoved the memory away. She slid her hands along her jeans and stood up, turning around to exit the house to retrieve another box.

"Don't bother, dear. It looks like all of your boxes are in the house now. That didn't take long, did it? It's wonderful how quickly things can get done when you have an extra pair of hands helping." Madge clasped her hands in front of her, glowing with pride at the part she had played in their moving in.

"Yes, you did a superb job. There is no way Cathleen and I could have gotten all of this done so quickly without you." Red slipped his arm over Liz's shoulders, and she forced herself not to stiffen. "You really do have an impressive strength. I assume you must have some sort of training regimen?"

Madge glanced down and waved her hand in the air as if she was batting off the complimentary assumption. "Not at all. My mother's side has simply always been very sturdy, you know. Why, my sister Janey worked in construction for a while. Our mother said it wasn't ladylike, but Janey did whatever she wanted, you know. She married Rupert, after all, even though we all told her she shouldn't, and look how well that turned out-"

"Ah, I see. Congratulations on your outstanding genetic code, then." His arm shifted off of her shoulders as he took a step forward and pressed his hands together. "Thank you so very much for all you did for us this morning, it really is very appreciated, but I'm afraid that Cathy and I have some..." his eyes slid over to Liz and his voice lowered into a deeper register that could be construed any number of ways. "Personal things we'd like to discuss."

"Well, then I won't keep you two!" Madge laughed at them as if they were a pair of incorrigible teenage lovers. "Oh! I almost forgot-whenever someone new moves in I always extend the courtesy of inviting them to have some tea at my house. I'm sure you'll be busy today, but maybe you'll have a spare moment tomorrow afternoon to come over?"

"That sounds absolutely lovely. What do you think?" He glanced over at Liz.

"Sure, sounds like it could be fun," she said. She supposed that Cathleen might have said it with more enthusiasm, but her energy was waning after spending two hours walking in and out of the house with her arms weighed down by boxes.

"We should be available at two-thirty if that's convenient for you," Red said, glancing at Madge.

"That would be perfect. I'll see you two then. Enjoy the rest of your day!" Surprisingly, without any sort of urging, she turned around and exited the house, the door clicking shut behind her.

The minute she left, Liz slumped back into herself, dropping any pretense of being an energetic young therapist. It was like shucking off an uncomfortable piece of clothing and leaving it in a heap on the floor, and as she glanced over at Red, it seemed that he had gone through a similar process, for his posture had reverted back into its stiff control and caution, any semblance of suburban softness gone.

But there was still the matter of his attire that threw her off. Though she'd first seen it that morning, she hadn't adjusted to it yet. She was used to seeing him in nothing less than the finest wardrobe that probably cost a large wad of cash, but of course that sort of clothing wasn't fitting for his alias. So now he stood in front of her in jeans and a light gray button down shirt that looked like it could have been found on a rack at Macy's for a decent price that didn't run into the triple digits. Strangest of all, he was wearing a pair of black framed glasses. It was meant to complete the mild-mannered suburban husband look, and while she had to admit that the glasses did that, seeing him admit to any sort of physical weakness-even if it was only slightly impaired eyesight-was jarring.

She pushed a hand through her hair and nudged a nearby box with the tip of her shoe. "Well, I'm glad that's over," she sighed.

"Really? I found her quite charming in a way. And anyway, at the very least we have a friend in the neighborhood, and a chatty one at that. Can youimagine the gossip she has gathered over the years? All the explicit, juicy details about sordid affairs and the dirty little secrets people have pushed under the rug," he said, running his tongue over the edge of his teeth. He sounded like he was talking about a dinner he was anticipating as opposed to people's dark secrets.

"I'd rather not hear about the affairs, but you're right. She seems to know a lot, and she'll probably be able to give us information on Beecher or may even be able to introduce us." She crossed the room to flop onto the couch that sat in the middle of it, body suddenly going limp as it realized how much it ached after having carried boxes around for two hours. She was very glad for the semi-furnished nature of the home.

Red stayed where he was for a moment and gave a loose shrug. "Oh I don't know, I would rather like to hear the tawdry details, but I see your point. Learning information about Beecher is our main priority, the affairs can be put down lower on the to do list."

"Speaking of the to-do list, I think the next item on it is unpacking all this stuff." She peeled herself away from the couch and hunched over, dragging a hand down from her forehead to her chin.

After she'd moved in with Tom, even through the buzz of stress, she'd be so happy. Why wouldn't she have been? She thought that she had finally met someone kind that she could spend the rest of her life with, and to top it off she was moving out of an apartment and her bothersome neighbors to have her own home with someone she'd loved. So as they'd been unpacking, even as her eyelids were heavy and her movements sluggish, she'd felt joy at pulling things out of boxes, even if it was just a case of DVDs they probably would never watch. With each item removed, it was like watching her life with him slowly come together-his alarm clock in a box with her sweater, the arm of it thrown over the face of the clock, a pile of her blankets winding around his pillow. It was pieces of two separate lives stitched together, a physical manifestation of their wedding vows to unite their individual lives into one whole. Even then she'd known that the thought was sentimental and cheesy, but it made her feel warm and safe. It was hard not to remember that moment now as she scanned the room and saw the boxes dotting the room like rocks jutting up from a plain. Her and Tom's house had looked similar before they attacked the boxes with gusto.

She could at least comfort herself with the knowledge that there would be no such sentimentality attached to unpacking these things. Very few of the things that were in the boxes were items that she or Red owned. Some of them might conceivably be things that she would buy-and she knew that Red had managed to work in some old records and books of his own-but most of the items were generic. They were the sort of thing that any normal, genteel couple would own. They were simply props for the play that she and Red were to be the co-stars in. And some of the items in one or two of the boxes were decidedly not domestic and were more suited to surveillance and espionage.

As she was about to stand, she scooted back an inch on the couch, the fake leather squeaking as she saw that Red had suddenly come to stand close in front of her. She must have been so lost in thought she hadn't noticed him come closer. His glasses glittered as he turned his head, eyes flicking back and forth over her face as if he was trying to read her thoughts in the dip of her frown.

"You okay?" he asked. His eyes still searched her face.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." She pressed her lower lip against her upper, sliding her hands down to her knees where she drummed her palms on her jeans. "Let's just get to unpacking. It's gonna take a while, so let's get started."

* * *

The next morning she awoke to the scent of bacon in her nostrils and the cold weight of a wedding ring against her right finger. And for a moment, her mind believed that the last year and half had been a long, strange, terrifying dream. Her husband wasn't a spy, there was no task force, there was no long list of criminals that she was helping apprehend. Reddington was still somewhere out there in the world, but she'd never met him, he was just a name and a black and white face on a withering Wanted poster that she never gave thought to.

She half expected to turn over in bed and find Tom standing there with a smile on his face telling her that breakfast was ready, and if she didn't get up soon then the food he'd made could soon be counted as lunch. And then she'd grin and drag him down to sit on the edge bed and she'd put off breakfast in favor of telling him the grand dream that was strange and excited and terrifying. And he'd just tell her that she shouldn't have eaten Thai food so late before going to sleep.

But that wasn't her reality. As she rolled over, there was no warm body on the other side of the bed, and there was no one standing across the room. This was reality-the past year and a half had happened, and the while she was wearing a wedding ring, it wasn't hers. It was Cathleen's. She lifted up her left hand for a moment to consider the band, spreading out her fingers.

The muted light coming in from behind the curtains made the stone in the ring sparkle and dance. As she and Red had been discussing their aliases, she'd insisted that the wedding ring be something simple. There was no point in putting exorbitant money into something that wasn't real, and besides, she really didn't want him making any extravagant gestures. Going undercover as a couple was hard enough without him pushing over the top gifts on her.

In the end, what he'd given her wasn't the obnoxiously flashy ring she'd been picturing. It was simple and rather elegant, and altogether looked more expensive than she would've preferred, but he'd insisted that she not reject it on the basis though Liz might not want the ring, Cathleenwould. It was her style, and it was something that Noah would've given her. Inhabiting their roles was important, and besides, her not liking the ring wasn't much different than him preferring to wear three piece suits to sweater vests, but they all had to make sacrifices for the sake of their cover.

As the smell of bacon only grew more tempting, she shoved herself off the bed and ran a hand along her head, smoothing down the mess of dark hair that had become tangled in the night. She hadn't bothered to put her clothes away yet, so she simply rummaged through the box that sat next to the bed and threw on a T-shirt and jeans.

Eyes still heavy with the sleep that clung to them, she shuffled out of the bedroom, through the hallway, and into the kitchen. She blinked quickly, shaking her head as she watched Red at the stove shoving a spatula around in a pan that contained scrambled eggs. With his narrowed eyes concentrating on the food and his white shirt and slacks, he looked for all the world like a dutiful husband and not the sharp, dangerous criminal that he really was.

For a moment, she wondered how much of his pre-criminal, married life he was drawing upon in order to pretend to be Noah. She knew that in order to pretend to be Cathleen she was pulling from her memories of being a fresh-faced, foolish college student and from the elation and contentment she had felt when she was newly married to Tom. How much of the husband and father he had been was he putting into his performance? How many times had he done something like this-woken up before his wife and made her breakfast? Or perhaps that wasn't the sort of husband he'd ever been. Perhaps he'd been distant and not prone to sentimental gestures like that. He barely alluded to that chapter of his life, and the FBI had very little information on it. It was a blank, mysterious void to her.

She took another step forward and leaned her hip against the kitchen table. "How very domestic," she said, crossing her arms and glancing at a second pan that held bacon that quietly sizzled and popped.

"Ah! Good morning, Lizzie. I simply decided to take it upon myself to cook something considering the fact that you would probably char anything that you made us. I would prefer to get through this case without choking down a singed brick of toast." He reached over and turned the bacon over with a fork that leaned against the rim of the pan.

She wanted to argue, but she knew full well that sometimes she could barely stomach the things she attempted to cook. There was no doubt in her mind that his sophisticated palette would physically reject any food that she made, so it really was in both their best interests to either order food or let him make it, no matter how strange it was to wake up to someone other than Tom making her breakfast.

She gave the eggs another glance. "Well, the protein will be good for the day ahead," she said absently before pushing off of the table and wandering over to the refrigerator.

As she yanked it open, she remembered that there was no orange juice in it because they hadn't done any shopping yet. The only thing that sat in it was a carton of eggs and a package of bacon, both newly purchased. Red must have gotten up even earlier that she realized in order to get them from the store-or perhaps he'd had someone bring them to the house. It was hard for Liz to picture him going to the grocery store and wandering the meat and egg aisles, even in casual clothing.

"Seems like you're a pro at doing this sort of thing. Are you a breakfast in bed on your significant other's birthday kind of guy?" She glanced over her shoulder at him as she shut the fridge door. She didn't expect him to give a straight answer, but information about his past fascinated her and gave her more insight into who he had once been.

"Of course not. Where is the spontaneity in only doing something that is simply expected for special days?" he said, waving a hand.

It wasn't much of an answer, but it still told her something. If he cared about someone, he wasn't going to wait for a special occasion to do something for them. He was going to show his affection whenever the mood struck him. She briefly held the image of a younger version of him in her mind bringing his wife a tray of foot on a Saturday morning when she'd slept in. And then that thought lead to a real memory: the morning after she and Tom had moved in, she'd tried to do something similar to what Red was doing right now-she'd done her best to slip out of bed without disturbing Tom and had moved as quietly as possible into the kitchen to make him breakfast. Strangely enough, it was scrambled eggs she'd tried to make, but she'd become distracted by a barrage of texts she had been sent, and the eggs had become a flat, crispy mass. When Tom had seen the mess, he simply laughed and she'd playfully shoved at him as she complained that even when she was trying to do something nice her food wouldn't cooperate. He'd ended up making french toast, and they'd had to drink out of mason jars again, and all the while she'd kept staring at him thinking, This is real. I finally have something good and right in my life. She grimaced and plopped down into a chair, picking at the bed of her thumbnail with an index finger.

"Do you miss it?" Red asked suddenly.

Liz blinked as if in a daze. "What?" She hoped that he wasn't asking what she thought he was asking.

"Being married. Do you miss it?" He turned up the heat on the stove, his head turned away from her.

Heat suddenly pressed behind her eyes, and she set her jaw. He couldn't leave well enough alone, could he? He had to follow through with prodding at sensitive subjects. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Quid pro quo, Lizzie. I tell you things, you tell me things." He glanced over his shoulder this time, the hint of a smile at the edge of his mouth.

She wasn't sure why he'd suddenly shifted the tone of the conversation back into something playful, but she was willing to go along with it if it meant backing away from the topic of Tom. "You know, I'm pretty sure there should be some rule against quoting Hannibal Lecter while you're cooking. And if there's not a rule against it, I'm making one right now."

"Fair enough." He pulled the pan of bacon off the burner and held a hand over it, testing the heat that wafted from the strips of meat. "These seem to be done, and the eggs should shortly follow."

She didn't move to stand and get any of the bacon because she was too busy digging her fingers into her arms, still bothered by the memories of Tom that seemed to be arising more and more frequently. She knew it was because of this case and how much deja vu it invoked, but she didn't want things she'd barely thought of dredged up. Mercifully, Red let her stew with her thoughts as he finished the eggs, and still let the silence reign as she dished up breakfast on one of the generic, off-white plates they had unpacked yesterday.

As expected, the eggs were made perfectly. It irritated her that it seemed there were very few things that Red wasn't good at.

"Do you miss being married?" she asked, not looking up as she crunched on a strip of bacon. Perhaps her irritation and sour mood at Red having pried minutes ago was what made her ask it.

The silence lengthened out, and his only response was scraping the tines of his fork across his plate. She wasn't sure if he was going to answer, but then he said, "There are individual aspects of it that I occasionally miss."

"I understand that." And she did. She didn't want to be with Tom again, but there were parts of marriage that she longed for-the having someone to come home to and confide in, the little bland moments that become extraordinary when shared with someone that you loved.

"I know," he said, voice a bit quiet.

She didn't have the energy or the will to contradict him. She pushed her plate away and stood, dusting nonexistent lint from her pants. "Well, I'm going to brush my teeth and take a shower. Thank you for the food."

At least there was something both of them were on equal ground on-both of them were professionals at changing the subject over something they didn't want to talk about.


	3. Chapter 3

The instant she entered Madge's home, she was assaulted by the sharp scent of cinnamon. The entire place was crammed with furniture and ornaments, but not in a haphazard, mismatched way. Entering the house felt like walking into an antique store in that all the items were older and from various different eras, but they had been arranged in an organized, aesthetically pleasing fashion, and the furniture and nick-nacks were clearly cared for. There wasn't a speck of dust on the coffee table that sat in between two sofas, nor were there any cracks in the spines of the thick books that lined the shelves along the back wall. Glancing at Red, his expression clearly said that he was enamored with the antiquarian charm of the place. His eyes particularly lingered against the broad spines of the leather books as if he longed to run his hands over them and flick through the pages.

Madge entered through the kitchen doorway holding a tea service, her eyes concentrated on the cups that wobbled against the tray with every step that she took. Seemingly awoken from his literary reverie, Red crossed the length of the room and over to Madge.

"You were so _very_ helpful yesterday with moving us in, so please let me return the favor by helping you with that," he said, hands hovering beneath the tray.

Madge seemed to hesitate for a moment with her boast of having a strength beyond on her years on the line, but the social mores of letting a favor be repaid eventually won out. "Oh, all right. Thank you very much, Noah."

He nodded his head with a smile and took the tray, his strides long and quick as he walked toward the coffee table and set the tray down, the tea set barely making any sound at all as it was placed upon the table. Liz knew that he was partially showing off. She resisted rolling her eyes.

Madge sat down in one of the sofas facing the table, sinking back into the sagging, well used cushions. She waved a hand at the opposite couch. "Please, sit down. There's no reason for to keep standing up."

At her suggestion Liz glanced down at the other sofa and she was almost nervous about sitting on it due to its age. Not touching old, valuable things was ingrained in her, but she logically knew that the sofa wasn't off limits, so she managed to slide down into it, back stiff and flat as a board even as she leaned back against the cushions. Red sat down soon after her, body loose and relaxed as if he was the one that owned the home and not Madge. He threw an arm across the back of the couch, almost touching her shoulders, but not quite-a gesture of ease. She tried to follow suit as she sat her hands in her lap, fingers loosely clasping each other.

Without a moment's hesitation, Madge leaned forward, her sofa creaking quietly as she picked up the teapot and poured herself a cup of tea. Liz followed suit once Madge was done, and as she took a sip of her tea, she had to keep herself from grimacing.

"It's herbal. It's uncaffinated so better for you, you know." She blew on her cup to cool it and took a sip. "Do you like it?"

"Yes, it's nice," she said, giving a pinched smile. Red gave her a look that she wasn't able to interpret. Did he think she'd given the wrong answer? They were trying to ingratiate themselves to the woman, not insult her tea choices.

"So, how are you two enjoying the neighborhood?" Madge had settled back once again into the cushions. They looked like they were trying to swallow up her small body.

"Very much. It's so quiet and tranquil, and just what we were looking for after moving out of the city. I can hardly believe that we took so long to move into place like this," Red said with a sigh, shaking his head and looking down into his teacup before taking a sip. If he disliked it, he didn't show it.

"Yes, it really is like coming home," Liz said with with a wistful expression. She wondered if she was pouring it on too thick so she added, "I was raised somewhere like this so it really brings back good memories."

"Oh, I'm glad. Some people don't like it much here. They find it _too_ quiet. If they feel that way, I don't see why they'd come out here. There are plenty of city apartments they can rent if they prefer neighbors walking up and down the stairs at all hours of the night." Madge just shook her head.

In truth, Liz was one of those people that preferred the constant noisy hum of the city. In noise, she could discern meaning and patterns. There was none of that in the thick silence of a suburban neighborhood only broken by the grumble of a lawn mower of the cacophony of crickets. Little to no noise meant that there was little to analyze and prepare for.

"You know, I'm trying to build up a clientele, so it would be nice to get to know some of the people that live here." That earned her another look from Red. She kept herself from narrowing her eyes. What did he want her to do? They couldn't waste precious time engaging in small talk. She knew it was necessary to build up rapport with Madge, but they already had that. There was no reason for her not to ask a question about the neighbors.

"No one here is particularly unfriendly, but it does take a while to get to know them, you understand. A lot of the people here have been here for years, so it's a closely knit group in a lot of ways." Her eyes flicked to the ceiling. "Every Thursday a lot of the neighbors get together and have a dinner. I could see if I could get them to invite you tomorrow, but..."

"I understand if they might not want to invite two new faces to their dinner. But we really would love to get to know the neighbors, and if anyone can get us an invitation, I believe it would be you." Red gave Madge a small half-smile. Somehow, he'd managed to turn his typical smug crooked grin into something kind and reassuring.

Seemingly won over by his charm, Madge matched his smile. "Well, I'll see what I can do. As I said, they're not unfriendly, so I'm sure it won't take much persuasion on my part."

"Thank you, we really do appreciate it." Liz clasped her tea in both hands, hardly any of it drunken.

"Indeed," Red said, echoing her sentiment. "It's so generous of you."

* * *

They had spent two hours at Madge's listening to her go on about stories from her youth and about all the trouble her sister Janey got into. She also managed to spend a good amount of the time complaining about Janey's ex-husband Rupert even though neither she nor Madge had seen Rupert in well over seven years. Not much of the information was particularly useful to their case, so she allowed her mind to wander and practice analyzing Madge's character in preparation for putting together the pieces of Beecher's plan.

Madge was lonely. It didn't take a genius to figure that out. There were plenty of older women that lived alone and would talk anyone's ear off if given the chance. But it was more than just that-Madge was stuck in the past. That much was clear from her selection of decor and the way she went on and on about things that had happened decades ago with as much emotion as if they had happened yesterday. And Liz thought perhaps her resentment of Rupert stemmed from some sort of larger resentment or disappointment towards men-or _a_ man. In all the time that Madge essentially told her entire life's story, she had only mentioned a man once. His named had been Roger, and though it had been a brief mention, she couldn't disguise the look on her face when she said his name. It was a look Liz knew only all to well-the look of someone that had trusted, cared for, and perhaps had even loved a man only for him to betray you.

Once the two hours passed, Red had apologetically informed Madge that he needed to attend to something pertaining to his business so they had to leave, but that he had _immensely_ enjoyed their time together. If he ever thought that she had been pouring it on too thick at any point that afternoon, Liz thought he should've taken a look in the mirror. Once they made it back to the house, Liz sighed and widened her eyes.

"Talking to her makes me feel like I've just run a marathon," she said.

"That's rather unfortunate, since she's probably going to be the least challenging person whose trust we have to gain. You did a commendable job back there, but you could stand to improve a bit." He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.

So they _were_ going to discuss his cryptic glances. With the way that he cherry-picked what he was willing to share, she hadn't even bothered to think about asking him what he had meant by those looks. "In what way?"

"When you were complimenting her tea. You were obviously lying that you liked it. A far better thing to do is simply not actually answer the question but give a response that _does_ sound like an answer when it's actually not." He shrugged off the light jacket that he had been wearing and hung it on the coat rack that stood near the door.

She didn't need him to tell her that. He gave non-answers on an hourly basis, and sometimes even on a minute by minute basis. "I've out and out lied plenty of times before. I don't need to play a complicated double-speak game."

He rolled his shoulders and took several steps towards her, his face suddenly serious. "Yes, you do. The other times you've lied didn't involve living a lie for the long term. The less often you give straight answers the less likely you are to be caught in a contradiction. Lizzie, I am not giving you this advice as some cheap shot at you. I am giving it to you to ensure a successful outcome of this case."

She wasn't sure what to say to that. The way he could suddenly flip from light conversation into grave intensity made her feel like she had a case of mood whiplash. "Yeah, okay. I understand. I'll do the best I can to improve."

He pursed his lips and lay a hand against her shoulder, giving it a quick pat. "Good. Now, then, we should send for someone to get us some groceries. We're going to be making a casserole."

"I- _what_? You don't even know if we're invited to the dinner yet and _we_ are making something to share? What happened to your doubt in my culinary skills?" She thought he was getting too far ahead of himself, and she didn't particularly want to attempt to help cook something that would on doubt be complicated.

"If you know anything about me, you know that I am _immeasurably_ persuasive. I have no reason to doubt that we will be invited. And yes, _we_. You and I are a team, you know. If you do not help, they will know. When you cook something, you always put a bit of yourself in it, and if you don't help, our dear neighbors will be able to tell." He was already pulling a flip phone out of his pocket, no doubt to contact someone to give them a list of ingredients to purchase at the store.

"Yeah, the piece of myself I'll put in will be a lot of char and a bit of salt. And hold on there-" She reached out for the phone, her hand closing around the bottom of it as one of his fingers was in mid-dial. She stood there for a moment, her hand pressed over his as they both clutched the phone. They blinked at each other, both surprised at her movement.

"It's just that-doesn't it make more sense if one of us goes to the store? We're pretending to be a middle class couple, and we're trying to integrate into the neighborhood. Middle class people don't usually have their groceries delivered, and being seen in the community would be a good way of starting to integrate." Liz peeled her hand away from the phone and dropped it at her side.

He looked down at the phone for a moment, eyes affixed to the screen, fingers still hovering over the buttons. " _Hm_ ," he said, the noise vibrating in his throat. "Yes, you're right." He shoved the phone back into his pocket.

"I can be the one that goes. Let's figure out what we need to get and I'll be off." She jerked her head toward the door.

As she stood over the kitchen table with a scrap of paper and a pen next to him debating the ingredients they needed, she was struck with how very _odd_ the entire situation was. It wasn't that she hadn't been aware of the absurdity of going undercover as married couple, but there was a difference between the concept being strange in theory and it being strange in practice. Making a shopping list with a notorious criminal was one of those things that highlighted how odd it all was.

And though it was odd, it was exactly _bad_. After the disarray her life had been thrown into-admittedly, partially through her own doing-there was something nice about quiet moments like this, no matter how strange they were. And she valued the calm in between each inevitable verbal conflict with Red. Somehow, she wished things were like this more often between them.

Once they had finished the list he tossed her the keys to the car he had obtained for them for the duration of the case. She didn't particularly want to know where or how he'd gotten it, so she wasn't about to ask.

As she exited the door, she flicked a wave to him. He raised a hand in response, a smile crossing his face, eyes warm and open.

It reminded her of the look in the last photograph that they had taken. The look that had made something twist inside of her.

She swallowed and turned away, shutting the door between them with a thud.


End file.
